Pesticides and insects repellents have long been sought for use against harmful or annoying parasites. Pests such as lice and fleas are irritating and painful to their human and animal hosts, and can also be vectors for other agents of disease. The pesticides and repellents available in the prior art, however, suffer from various deficiencies. Often, compositions provided as insect repellents are not insecticidal. Furthermore, many compositions are either toxic or generally unpleasant to the host. Still others require too many separate active ingredients for efficient production and regulation.
Many synthetic prior art compositions have been proposed as insect repellents, but have later been determined to be unsuitable for safe use by humans. One common active ingredient in prior commercial compositions is N,N-Diethyl-m-toluamide (DEET). However, DEET was subsequently associated with causing various undesirable side-effects, such as stinging, damage to mucous membranes, and possibly seizures. In 1989, the Centers for Disease Control issued a cautionary statement regarding the use of DEET. Many other prior art compounds proposed for use as a repellent have proven unsuitable for topical application to humans or other animals due to their toxic or noxious effect on the infested individual.
Various crude oil extracts of certain plants, such as citronella oil obtained from Cymbopogon citrata, or eucalyptus oil obtained from Eucalyptus citriodora, have been provided in the prior art as pest repellents. However, the oil complex itself is greasy and may have an unpleasant odor, which makes its use undesirable. Furthermore, consistent production of a safe and effective product is difficult, due to varying amounts of constituent compounds within batches of these complex oils and the difficulty of monitoring a large number of components. Therefore, insect repellents containing the whole oil of citronella, for example, are undesirable due to their limited repellency, unpleasant odor and consistency, and unreliable composition of potentially harmful and unnecessary agents.
Most prior art insect treatments are taught to be effective only with specific synergistic combinations of multiple pesticides. In the art, there has not been recognized a simple but effective pediculicidal and ovicidal composition that is effective and which does not require a combination of excess multiple pesticidal ingredients.
What is needed in the art is an especially effective pediculicidal and ovicidal composition. The composition should also be able to cleanse an individual being treated for infestation.